Vasan hopeful of DMK support to govt on FDI issue

ERODE: Ruling out mid-term elections, Union Shipping Minister and senior Congress leader G K Vasan has expressed confidence that the DMK would back the government in Parliament on the issue of FDI in multi-brand retail.

DMK a part of the ruling coalition for the past over eight years had been supporting the government and hence he was hopeful it would back the Congress-led UPA government on the FDI issue also over which opposition parties have proposed to move resolutions in the winter session of Parliament, he told reporters here last night.

DMK chief M Karunanidhi, who has earlier opposed FDI in retail, has been maintaining that the party's stand on any opposition-sponsored resolution would be taken by its MPs and wanted the suspense to continue.

At the dinner hosted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for UPA leaders on Friday, the DMK is understood to have insisted that government should avoid voting in Parliament on FDI in retail, making clear its reservation on the issue. Vasan also said Parliament elections would be held only in 2014 when the present term of the UPA ends.

Vasan, a former TNCC President, said party MPs and Ministers from the state would press the Centre to allocate of the entire 1,000 MW to be generated by the first unit of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant to the state in view of the grim power situation faced by it.

On the November 15 order of Cauvery Monitoring Committee directing Karnataka to release 4.8 tmc of water to Tamil Nadu over the next fortnight, the Minister said he was hopeful the upper riparian state would respect the order and release water to save the standing crops in Delta districts.